Horn of Africa Crisis: What We're Doing in Somalia
Across Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, and Djibouti, we’re helping thousands of children in the hardest-hit regions—from the 3,000 malnourished children we’re treating in Somalia, to our efforts in Garbatulla, Kenya, where one in five children is now malnourished. We’re racing to reduce the impact of water shortages by constructing wells, drilling boreholes, and installing storage devices to capture future rainfall, in addition to promoting hygiene to prevent the spread of diarrhea, cholera, and other water-borne diseases.
Providing humanitarian assistance in Somalia is complicated by its unique security context, not to mention the logistical difficulties of delivering assistance across contested territories. Despite these difficulties, Action Against Hunger provided more than 130,000 people with assistance in July alone.
Action Against Hunger is one of only a few organizations working in the Bakool and Benadir regions of Somalia—the epicenter of this catastrophe—and our teams are providing assistance in Mogadishu and in the refugee camps along the Ethiopian and Kenyan borders, where thousands of Somalis have sought refuge.
Nutrition and Health:
- The number of severely malnourished children admitted into Action Against Hunger’s 16 nutrition centers in Bakool and Mogadishu has grown significantly, suggesting that conditions are deteriorating: from 1,600 admissions in May, to 2,070 in June, and over 2,500 in July.
- Some 7,000 children were successfully treated for malnutrition between March and July.
- Programs launched to treat cases of moderate of acute malnutrition have helped an additional 9,000 children, with a worrisome 300 children admitted for treatment across a recent three-day period.
- We’ve provided vaccinations for some 10,000 children and pregnant and nursing women in Mogadishu; our teams have provided basic health care for another 6,800 sick children, and some 3,000 pregnant women and nursing mothers received pre- and post-natal care.
Food Security & Livelihoods:
- In August, 215 tons of food assistance—cereals, pulses, oil and salt—were distributed to 12,500 individuals.
- To ensure access to food and water in Wajid (Bakool region), we are providing 80,000 people with distributions of food along with agricultural support and animal health campaigns for the remaining herds.
Water, Sanitation & Hygiene:
- We’ve distributed hygiene kits (clean containers for water, chlorine, soap, etc.) to some 15,000 people in Mogadishu, while an additional 6,000 contingency kits (water containers, mosquito nets, and soap) were distributed to more than 5,000 displaced people.
- Water points have been restored and created for 11,250 people in Wajid.
- Our teams have chlorinated 326 water points to ensure access to safe drinking water and limit the spread of disease, benefitting more than 97,000 people in Mogadishu.
- Educational hygiene promotion sessions are routinely held to limit the spread of waterborne diseases, reaching more than 80,000 people.